Sports
Europa League tie delayed after fog cancels all Faroe Islands flights
Poland champions Lech Poznan had a chartered flight postponed and later rerouted due to heavy fog ahead of their Europa League tie against KI Klaksvik, causing kick-off to be delayed by 24 hours until Friday.
The second leg of the tie was due to get underway at 6.30pm local time but extreme fog prevented Lech’s planned journey from landing at Vagar Airport — the only commercial airport in the Faroes, home to 56,000 people.
Lech had originally planned to fly out on Wednesday, but local Faroe weather conditions meant the plane did not take off. Lech coach Niels Frederiksen told his squad that a decision would need to be made and the club could not “just postpone, postpone, and postpone” its initial planned departure.
Frederiksen reassured the team: “If we fly Thursday and play that day then we will have to leave quite early, so we still have the possibility to rest.”
The journey was then attempted on Thursday morning, but it was deemed unsafe to attempt a landing in the weather conditions. As detailed by plane-tracking website Flightradar, Lech’s flight was kept in a holding pattern off the west coast of Norway — 850km to the east of the Faroes — for 40 minutes before eventually being diverted to Bergen, on Norway’s west coast.
— Lech Poznań
(@LechPoznan) August 13, 2026
As detailed by Flightradar, no planes landed in the Faroes throughout Wednesday and after three landings between 7.23-7.58am on Thursday, there was a further five-hour delay due to weather conditions.
Lech posted an updated from Bergen at 2.13pm on Thursday that the squad were once again attempting the trip, and they landed safely at Vagar Airport at 3.30pm. The fixture takes place in the capital Torshavn, a 47km drive to the east.
Due to the timing of Lech’s arrival, governing body UEFA initially delayed the kick-of time by two hours and 15 minutes to 8:45pm local time. UEFA reaffirmed to The Athletic that Lech were “making every effort to reach their final destination as soon as possible” with hopes that the game could commence at its newly-schedule time.
However, later on Thursday the game was officially postponed until Friday, with a 7pm start.
Poznań
Vágar pic.twitter.com/lok5lqiHCu — Lech Poznań
(@LechPoznan) August 13, 2026
Flight delays into the Faroes, a self-governing archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and part of the Kingdom of Denmark, are common. This summer, Hamrun Spartans of Malta and Slovenia’s Koper both endured delays into Vagar Airport ahead of their European ties against local side NSI Runavik. Each game faced a delayed kick-off time as a result.
Lech were using a chartered plane for their journey rather than Atlantic Airways, the national airline of the Faroes which uses Vagar Airport as its base and whose pilots are trained for landing in local conditions which are frequently challenging.
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